Mishpatim: Opinion

There is a very provocative sentence in this weeks parsha

לֹֽא־תִהְיֶ֥ה אַחֲרֵֽי־רַבִּ֖ים לְרָעֹ֑ת וְלֹא־תַעֲנֶ֣ה עַל־רִ֗ב לִנְטֹ֛ת אַחֲרֵ֥י רַבִּ֖ים לְהַטֹּֽת׃

Do not follow a majority to do ill; neither  bear witness in a cause to turn aside after a majority  to pervert justice;

This is   very difficult verse to translate.  The meaning of the words, and the implications of their combination is not simple.  

As a contemporary  American, I would like to believe that the Torah is advising me to buck the crowd, to question the beliefs of the society.  It is telling me that the prevailing assumptions - political,scientific, etc. - should be scrutinized.  And unless those doctrines are carefully analyzed, they will lead to evil, raoth. 

Onkelos, the official translation,  is simultaneously enlightening and obscure: 

לָא תְהֵי בָּתַר סַגִיאִין לְאַבְאָשָׁא וְלָא תִתִּמְנַע מִלְאַלָפָא מָא דִבְעֵינָךְ עַל דִינָא בָּתַר סַגִיאֵי שְׁלַם דִינָא:

Do not follow the many to wickedness, and do not  fail to teach that which in your eyes is judgment;⁽⁵¹⁾ after the majority  you  shall fulfill judgment.

 Rashi seems to come to this approach,     וַאֲנִי אוֹמֵר לְיַשְּׁבוֹ עַל אָפְנָיו כִּפְשׁוּטוֹ כָךְ פִּתְרוֹנוֹ: לא תהיה אחרי רבים לרעת. אִם רָאִיתָ רְשָׁעִים מַטִּין מִשְׁפָּט, לֹא תֹאמַר, הוֹאִיל וְרַבִּים הֵם הִנְנִי נוֹטֶה אַחֲרֵיהֶם: , And I say that to have the verse make sense, as it appears, it should be explained as saying: if you see villains perverting justice, do not say, since they are the majority  I would be inclined to agree with them. 

This is the end of the Rashi.  Prior to this Rashi alludes to the treatment of this pasuk in  Sanhedrin  (2a) where it is used to derive that a capital sentence requires more than a simple majority ( rabim), it requires at least one additional vote for conviction  (LeRaoth), but a simple majority will acquit. 

In fact, this verse is used in Bava Metziah (59b), in the famous case of the Tanur shel Akinai, to justify majority rule!

Bava Metzia 59b:5

Rabbi Yehoshua stood on his feet and said: It is written: “It is not in heaven” (Deuteronomy 30:12). The Gemara asks: What is the relevance of the phrase “It is not in heaven” in this context? Rabbi Yirmeya says: Since the Torah was already given at Mount Sinai, we do not regard a Divine Voice, as You already wrote at Mount Sinai, in the Torah: “After a majority to incline” (Exodus 23:2). Since the majority of Rabbis disagreed with Rabbi Eliezer’s opinion, the halakha is not ruled in accordance with his opinion. The Gemara relates: Years after, Rabbi Natan encountered Elijah the prophet and said to him: What did the Holy One, Blessed be He, do at that time, when Rabbi Yehoshua issued his declaration? Elijah said to him: The Holy One, Blessed be He, smiled and said: My children have triumphed over Me; My children have triumphed over Me

בבא מציעא נ״ט ב:ה

עמד רבי יהושע על רגליו ואמר (דברים ל, יב) לא בשמים היא מאי לא בשמים היא אמר רבי ירמיה שכבר נתנה תורה מהר סיני אין אנו משגיחין בבת קול שכבר כתבת בהר סיני בתורה (שמות כג, ב) אחרי רבים להטות אשכחיה רבי נתן לאליהו א"ל מאי עביד קוב"ה בההיא שעתא א"ל קא חייך ואמר נצחוני בני נצחוני בני

 The sages seem to take the opposite meaning from this clause! It is an assertion of power that should be ascribed to the majority. Rashi recognizes this problem, and opens with 

יֵשׁ בְּמִקְרָא זֶה מִדְרְשֵׁי חַכְמֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, אֲבָל אֵין לְשׁוֹן הַמִּקְרָא מְיֻשָּׁב בָּהֶן עַל אָפְנָיו

There are  interpretations  of this verse given by the Sages of Israel but the wording of the text does not fit in well with them

How can we reconcile these views? Clearly, personal opinion cannot be the rule. The subjective has too many idiosyncratic variables. Consensus and majority are ways to assure the normalcy of a decision.  

But the opinion of the righteous should not be silenced.  It can be the voice of justice. In science, it can be the voice of progress

Yithro: Danger

The Ten Commandments, the centerpiece of this weeks's parsha, are preceded by preparations.  Three days of purification and  clean clothes will be required.  There is a warning of the danger of approaching Gd. Even touching the mountain, the site of revelation, is a fatal error for man or beast. Why is Gd so dangerous? 

This revelation comes in the context of the new judicial system suggested by Jethro. A hierarchy of courts are to be established with more difficult cases advanced to higher levels, up to Moshe, who can ask Gd. The authority of the system depends upon the power of the entity at the top.  The awesome, vital, power that stands behind the decisions prevents the idea of deviation from its ruling. The drama shows that a breach  can be fatal.

Gd's recent, prior demonstrations of domination over the predicted: the palgues, the splitting of the sea, the Manna- they were not sufficient.  The relationship between omnipotence and   the law needed demonstration.  Violations of the (arbitrary) rules of purity , crossing an arbitrary boundary,  could cost one's life in the context of receiving the law.  The relationship between the law and its consequences was unpredictably severe.

Gd's wrath is always justified. Not so human violence. 

The last of the 10 commandments  is the prohibition of coveting.  The parsha ends with a coda involving the construction of sacrificial altars. The altars are not to be made of cut stone.  The application of the sword, the cutting tool, is inappropriate to the instrument of worship. Here is the irony.  The first murder ( violation of commandment 7)  was based upon Cain's envy ( #10)  of Hevel.  This is in contrast with Moshe's killing of the Egyptian taskmaster to rescue his kin,  the slave.  That killing eventually leads to Moshe  being the intimate of Gd.   Cain killed for the ritual, Moshe did what the law should have prescribed.

Bashalach: Splitting

The centerpiece of this very complex parsha is the splitting of the sea.  This was the great, public miracle that finally liberated the Israelites by drowning the enemy army and put a body of water between the newly free  Hebrews and the treacherous Egyptians. The splitting of the sea marked the new era, an irreversible process, a singularity had occurred. Now there was no way back. 

Belief in this story is an Orthodox Jewish article of faith.  The song of the sea is repeated in the morning service seven days per week.  Gd made a miracles so great that it was convincing to all who heard about it.  Now, on our times, it is reproduced as a movie illusion.  Now, in the modern era, we either struggle to harmonize it with our understanding of physical laws or struggle with its improbability ( at least as portrayed by Cecil B DeMille)  

There are other splittings that have had enormous impact. They violate the senses, but the scientific religion of our time makes them articles of faith. 

The splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen was a miracle (but a reproducible miracle)  that revolutionized the understanding of the world.  The discovery that electricity, the wonder energy that we all take for granted ( who granted it to us? Volta,  Faraday, Tesla)  could interact with water and a separate this liquid into two gases, twice as much hydrogen as oxygen, reformulated the understanding of the composition of the world.  Water was no longer an element ( it had been for 3000 years), it was a compound.  Gases could chemically combine to make this remarkable liquid. 

The splitting of the atom meant that the most fundamental particle of identity  could be subdivided. What had been thought of as one now had parts, it was less of a one.  In addition, this fission, this parting  process, released enormous energy.  That energy now endangers the world and provides energy without releasing greenhouse gases.  This process of splitting the atom has its own priesthood and temples ... and demons

The splitting of DNA , at first with restriction enzymes and now with Crispr/Cas9, has let humans edit the stuff of life. Now we share in evolution, can humanize the products of animal immune systems, fix what nature has broken and, much more often, break what nature has made nearly perfect. 

All of these splittings are wonderous and dangerous. 

May their recollection bring us to wisdom and unity. 

Bo: for the sake of the story

Bo: For the sake of the story

In the beginning ( 10;2), in the middle ( 12;14) and at the end ( 13;8 and 13;14)  the parsha tells us its purpose: To generate a story  that will be told from generation to generation.  This is the foundational story:  shared ancestry,  shared persecution, the caring Gd with miraculous powers,  and the liberation.  To everyone but the generation that experienced it, it is a story. There are no clouds of hungry locusts crawling on our skin and despoiling the land.  There is no impenetrable darkness.The firstborn are not all dying in a single night.  But, to an extent , we can imagine these things.  We sympathize with the the oppressed ancestors who are in the throes of liberation and their ambivalence at the severity of the punishment of their oppressors. We share the feelings of the victors and victims.

The lessons of the story: trust in supernatural salvation, be patient, obedient, follow instructions carefully. These are not so comfortable.  They violate the Star Trek  ethos of  solutions through science ( even if the science is not understood). More importantly, they no longer seem to work.


I have another, additional foundational story.  My wife recently  published the outline of this oral  tradition. It is the story of my parents survival in the Holocaust. In this, much more recent, story, the  Hebrew ancestors are the victims of the plagues and 90% succumb.  (Note that the midrash Tanchuma  reports that only 1 out of 5 or 50 or 500  of the Hebrews in Egypt were  redeemed. The ancients were always one up.)

The story of my parents' generation is also not immediate to me.  I did escape come under fire in in a hail of bullets and bombs in operation Barbarosa. I did not feel the lice eating me alive, giving me typhus, like my mother.  I did not witness the plague of firstborn, secondborn, ...justborn at Treblinka. There is no instruction to tell these stories to my children. The history is incomplete because of the raconteur's reluctance. But at the ceremony of recollection, the Passover Seder, my father would tell selected portions- usually those that emphasized his miraculous liberation.  He took a broader view of the injunction to" tell the children." We try to continue that in our family.

As the experiences of my own life fade into stories, I can appreciate some of the common threads  of hoping and believing that emerge from all of these stories
.
I now recognize every salvation as a miracle.

VA'erah: Do you believe in magic?

The parsha opens with a list, consisting of the patriarchs, to whom Gd has been revealed, albeit in an annonymous form. Gd had been the Power that is Sufficient  Now, Gd reveals Gd's identity.  Gd appears to those who have cultivated that vision:  An  attitude of humility, a disclaimer of understanding the workings of the world

We live in an era of science.  This is a body of (public) knowledge, democratically vetted, proven to work.  Actually, it is network of models that are religiously worshiped  on faith that "the experts" have reviewed, criticized and validated them .  All explanations must fit the mold, they must comply with the laws of Einstein ( or , at least Newton), Koch ( germ theory), Darwin, Hilbert(/Pythagorus), etc.  But we should not forget Freud and Morgenstern ( laws of rational economics) . They remind us that the models change, they are accepted and abandoned.

I have lived through the evolution of models.  The pivotal role of DNA as the genetic material was elucidated the year I was born. Before that, he mechanism of heredity was a mystery.  Then we find out that cells literally read a code that is written in 4 letters. This amazing discovery has spawned a deeper understanding that has not (yet) been replaced.

I see miracles of great importance almost daily. People who have been relegated to death by the most scientific of methodologies survive and flourish.   I have seen new treatments appear that work quickly, completely and without significant side effects.  Are these miracles? Yes!

And now we see the drug industry in the medical industry using these miracles to make as much money as a possibly can.  The drug companies propagate a narrative around the expense of creating these medicines that justifies their incredible Price

Pharaoh and the Egyptians had their model of how the world works. Whatever it was, it maintained the power of the pharoah and somehow allowed the enslavement of the Hebrews. 

These plagues challenged their understanding nature.  They challenge our understanding, as well.  Maybe we are a little less skeptical of miracles that come for our benefit.

The science here, he skepticism that comes from miracle, goes beyond the collection of reproducible observations and theoretical models . At a time of miracles, only miracles make sense.  The pretense of predictability is stripped away  and we  surrender to forces that we do not fathom, and the hope that they can be favorable.

And pray to the master of all.